Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday April 04, 2013 @09:50AM
from the they're-so-very-scrupulous-you-needn't-worry dept.

Presto Vivace writes with this snippet from the New York Times: "'In the six months since the Domain Awareness System was unveiled, officials of Microsoft, which designed the system with the New York Police Department, said they have been surprised by the response and are actively negotiating with a number of prospective buyers, whom Microsoft declined to identify.' Don't want this in your city? You might want to let your local leadership know how you feel."

As usual, no information about oversight, abuse detection, or anything similar. It's the same old "just trust us, we won't use our powerful new toy for anything bad, we promise." Puh-lease. The same people who claim that law abiding citizens with nothing to hide shouldn't care about privacy-invading constant surveillance are also the peopel who do their utmost to make darn sure no one can oobserve *their* activities or punish *them* for any infractions. "We don't trust you at all, but we expect you to just trust us." I'm so filled with confidence.

"Fraternal Order of Police spokesman Jim Pasco was quite straightforward about it.

Police officers, he told NPR, “need to move quickly, in split seconds, without giving a lot of thought to what the adverse consequences for them might be.” He added that law enforcement authorities believe “that anything that’s going to have a chilling effect on an officer moving — an apprehension that he’s being videotaped and may be made to look bad — could cost him or some citizen their life.”"

Initial UK media reports suggested that no CCTV footage was available from the Stockwell station, as recording media had not been replaced after being removed for examination after the previous day's attempted bombings. Other reports stated that faulty cameras on the platform were the reason for the lack of video evidence. An anonymous source confirmed that CCTV footage was available for the ticket area, but that there was a problem with the platform coverage. The source suggested that there was no useful CCTV footage from the platform or the train carriage.[103]

Extracts from a later police report stated that examination of the platform cameras had produced no footage. It said: "It has been established that there has been a technical problem with the CCTV equipment on the relevant platform and no footage exists." It also reported there was no footage from CCTV in the carriage where Menezes was shot, saying "Although there was on-board CCTV in the train, due to previous incidents, the hard drive had been removed and not replaced."

The platform CCTV system is maintained by the Tube Lines consortium in charge of maintaining the Northern Line; unofficial sources from inside the company insisted that the cameras were in working order. It was also reported that London Underground sources insisted that at least three of the four cameras trained on the Stockwell Tube platform were in full working order, and rejected suggestions that the cameras had not been fitted with new tapes after police took away footage from the previous day, 21 July, when suspects in the failed bombings caught trains there.[104]

Police do something they don't want recorded for the public to see, the surveillance equipment will coincidently be malfunctioning at that time.

Tough shit for the police. They have to deal with the same shit everyone else does, poor things. Guess what - we ALL would like to be able to act "without worrying about adverse consequences" - that sure would be nice! Golly, I know I'd like it if my employer promised not to monitor me. I'm apprehensive about being videotaped, too, but I can't do anything about it.

If you're a cop and can't do your job without worrying that you'll violate someone's rights on camera and get caught, well - QUIT NOW, thanks.

I'm not saying cops should have to get permission in triplicate before taking any action, but their actions should be recorded just like citizens are recorded, those recordings should be accessible to the puiblic, and police should be held accountable for their actions. What Jim Pasco seems to think is that it's OK for police to record citizens in case they are breaking the law, but not OK for police to be recorded in case *they* are breaking the law.

Please don't mistake my quotation for agreement. As it happens, Joe Pasco is a slimy shitbag even by the relaxed standards of lobbyists, he has quite the history, and the idea that '[police officers] “need to move quickly, in split seconds, without giving a lot of thought to what the adverse consequences for them might be.”' is nothing more than a flowery way of saying "We must be given impunity, or the terrorists or somebody win."

New York doesn't quite have LA's pure sleaze; but they make up for it in a more efficient, technocratic, vision of surveillance dystopia(As icing on the cake, a number of totally-ethically-unimpeachable corporate actors, mostly financial sector, even have cozy deals that provide them with access to the surveillance centers, just to keep a watchful eye on their interests...) Heartwarming place, really.

Ditto. I believe in law enforcement, but I also believe in corruption and it is everywhere. The "Trust me I won't " phrase has gone thru the Theory stage and is now pretty much at the Law stage of BS tag lines.

I'm sure it doesn't track every movement of every person in New York and store it in a database indefinitely. That will be version 2.0.

No, version 2.0 will include a facial-recognition system which has the ability to automatically exclude individuals who happen to wear a badge, or make the right amount of "contribution" to the local police fund.

I'm sure it doesn't track every movement of every person in New York and store it in a database indefinitely. That will be version 2.0.

No, version 2.0 will include a facial-recognition system which has the ability to automatically exclude individuals who happen to wear a badge, or make the right amount of "contribution" to the local police fund.

I for one don't care. Yes I'm one of those "if you have nothing to hide" people when it comes to location. I could really care less if the government knew exactly where I was at any given time. If the government turns evil and wants to kill all the dissidents... then my input on these cameras won't be requested it'll just happen anyway.

I'm in public. In public people can see what I'm doing. If they are really interested in me they'll just hire a private investigator or cop to follow me discreetly. I hav

Half of all state revenue plowed into "education," almost a quarter of the US Federal budget plowed into "healthcare" and we instantly mod up any mope with the brilliance to point out how little money we appear to have for "education" or "healthcare."

Don't trust a word of what we're told, only what we can see. Like their scanners, we were first told they couldn't record images, then that turned to "well, they can but only in testing mode", then that turned to "well, they can on production machines, but they can't be pulled off them", then that turned into stories of TSA agents emailing around pictures of passengers to their friends.

Written by the most honest man, and I can find a way to hang him with them. Old saying, variously attributed, stated long before just about everything you do or say could be written down to do that with - should you manage to become a "person of interest". So that's what is truly scary here.

But it's microsoft selling this? I feel much better now - it'll never work well enough...